Judge Restores dBase Copyright to Ashton-Tate : Software: The surprise reversal protects the company’s top-selling products from unlawful copying.

Ashton-Tate, in a major legal victory, has regained copyright protection for its flagship dBase software products after a federal judge reversed an earlier decision.

The surprise ruling by U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. in Los Angeles, released Tuesday by Ashton-Tate, restored the Torrance-based software publisher’s full protection against unlawful copying of its top-selling products. It also eliminates, at least for now, a potential threat to Ashton-Tate’s survival and a potential legal cloud over copyright protections for other software publishers.

But the ruling contained no explanation for the about-face, and the judge refused to comment.

“We’re just as surprised about this ruling as we were about the first one,” Ashton-Tate President William P. Lyons said. “But this time we’re delighted. A huge cloud has been lifted from us.”

Hatter’s latest ruling comes as Ashton-Tate is waging a fierce battle to reverse a steady stream of disappointments that depressed its operations and even threatened its survival. However, under Lyons, the company has issued new products, settled lawsuits from disgruntled shareholders and, last week, posted first-quarter profits of $3.1 million, its best quarterly results in two years.

Lyons said Ashton-Tate received Hatter’s ruling, dated April 18, in the mail Tuesday morning, adding that no one at the company had any indication that Hatter had reconsidered his earlier decision until the letter arrived.

“It’s certainly unusual legal procedure, but he’s finally made the right decision,” said Stuart Lutitz, a Los Angeles attorney specializing in intellectual property law. “His first ruling was unbelievable, but I just figured it would be overturned on appeal. This sets the record straight.”

Hatter sent shock waves through the software industry in December when he invalidated Ashton-Tate’s copyright protection on all its dBase programs because the company had repeatedly failed to disclose on its copyright applications the product’s intellectual origins--a program created at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena in the late 1970s.

According to legal experts, Hatter’s ruling was the first time a judge had stripped a software publisher of its copyright protection for failing to disclose the intellectual origins of its work. And lawyers predicted that if Hatter’s ruling was not reversed, it could cause chaos for Ashton-Tate’s business by giving competitors the rights to copy the firm’s premier product.

Hatter’s rulings stem from a copyright infringement lawsuit Ashton-Tate filed in 1988 against Fox Software, a Perrysburg, Ohio, maker of a dBase look-alike program. Ashton-Tate has contended that the Fox product unlawfully copies the “form of expression” and “novel look and feel” of dBase, a series of database management programs whose sales account for more than 60% of Ashton-Tate’s annual revenues.

Fox Software had asked Hatter to dismiss the suit because Ashton-Tate had repeatedly failed to disclose on its copyright applications that dBase was derived from JPLDIS, a software program for managing huge databases on mainframe computers developed at JPL.

Fox executives had no comment on Hatter’s latest decision.

Lyons said the new ruling means that Ashton-Tate’s lawsuit against Fox can proceed to a trial on its merits. However, Lyons said he hopes that he can negotiate an out-of-court settlement with Fox and avoid a lengthly trial. Lyons said he would consider licensing dBase to Fox in exchange for royalty payments.